In my latest modern setting game (mid 90's), the players decided they wanted to use pepper spray as their non-lethal solution, and after looking at a few post about it here and not liking what I saw (not heavy enough for my setting), I came up with this alternative, let me know what ya think.

both sizes: 1 on shooting die (regardless of wild die) and user is affected, wild die CAN still score a success, making it possible to both succeed AND fail. A raise allows the user to hit an additional target that is both within range and within 2" of first target (small sizes), or to double the width of the cone (animal size). Doing so costs an additional "use".

purse/pocket/keychain-sized

range: 1/1/2 (essentially, if adjacent its a normal shooting roll, with 1" separation, it's a called shot to hit the face)
uses: keychain size has 2 effective uses, purse and pocket size have 4 (rough guideline, 1 use = 1 second burst)
effect: target gains a -2 penalty on all rolls and makes an immediate vigor roll at -4 (the -2 already factored in) or is shaken. At the start of each subsequent turn, target makes vigor roll or begins turn shaken (can still spirit roll or benny to unshaken), lasts until 1 minute is spent flushing eyes with copious amounts of water. Accumulating 4 raises on the vigor rolls allows target to ignore effects of this application of pepper spray, as well as the blanket -2 penalty for subsequent applications (this benefit goes away after a day). This size of spray not generally effective on large animals (well, it sort of is, but you're still gonna have a bad day if you get that close).

animal sized canister

range: 6" cone, 3" wide at the end (but effect slightly less concentrated after 4", at 4-6" affects humans roughly the same as the smaller sizes)
uses: 5 1-second bursts
effect:
-on large animals, same effect as the smaller sizes have on humans, though animals don't need water for the one minute cleaning time.
-humans hit at less than 4" range also gain a fatigue level from inhalation of the spray if they fail their initial vigor roll. Two fatigue levels on a snake eyes (or a 1 for extras). This effect cannot incapacitate.

Anything with the Hardy trait ignores the -2 penalty and only needs 2 vigor raises to ignore the effects.

Wow, all those special cases and cones and sizes and penalties made my eyes bleed.

You've gotta keep it Fast, Furious, and Fun -- and that means keeping it simple! You also don't want something that's easily bought off a department store shelf to be a game-breaker in terms of balance.

A burst of pepper spray should do nonlethal damage that bypasses armor, with the added effect that anyone Shaken by the pepper spray is also blinded until they become unShaken.

I agree with the poster above, that the really hardcore military-grade spray could be given Fatigue damage or use the already existing poison rules.

range 1/2/4
Damage: None See notes
Rof: 1
Notes: On a successful attack the target must make a vigor roll, -2 to the roll on a raise. If successful the target takes a level of fatigue on a raise the target suffers no ill effects.
IF the target fails he gains the blind hindrance for d6 rounds, if a snake eyes is rolled the target is considered blind for the rest of the scene

range 1/2/4Damage: None See notesRof: 1Notes: On a successful attack the target must make a vigor roll, -2 to the roll on a raise. If successful the target takes a level of fatigue on a raise the target suffers no ill effects.IF the target fails he gains the blind hindrance for d6 rounds, if a snake eyes is rolled the target is considered blind for the rest of the scene

Bam! That's good.

What I don't understand is how/why would it hit the user? Like others have said, keep it FFF!

"Well, you do know what those who underestimate tigers always say right?"
"What?"
"They scream, 'Oh god help me I'm being mauled to death by a tiger.'"

One wish I have for any new weapon/attack types that deal Fatigue as an effect: Please specify HOW one recovers from the Fatigue.

There is no uniform method for recovering Fatigue that I know of; typically something is said along the lines of "Fatigue can be recovered only after 8 hours' sleep" or "after resting and warming up for 30 minutes by a fire," or "spending 15 minutes catching your breath," or whatever it is, depending on the specifications in the adventure or the rule. Fatigue that takes a few minutes to recover from is very different from Fatigue that stays with you indefinitely until some condition is met (such as the "Days at Sea" factor in Pirates RPG).

These aerosol spray cans deliver a disabling dose of eye irritant commonly used for self-defense or by police to subdue a subject. Using the spray is a Shooting roll requiring a Called Shot to the head (-4). Pepper spray deals Nonlethal Damage. Targets who are Shaken are also temporarily blinded. If the Shooting die roll is a 1 (regardless of the Wild Die), you overspray and roll damage on squares adjacent to the target. On snake-eyes the mist gets in your own eyes!

My problem with all the "keep it FFF" options in other threads, and what y'all have suggested here, is that they don't mirror/mimic the actual effects of pepper spray AT ALL. Pepper spray does NOT have a short and simple effect. Nor does it blind you, though it triggers a reflex to close your eyes and/or blink a lot, as your eyes are trying to clear out an irritant. It also doesn't make any sense to me to have it deal damage dice of any kind, it is used because it's debilitating (ie: makes it difficult to do anything), without doing any lasting damage. You use it to take people out of combat, completely. Sure, a person can try to power through it, but for most people, that would be very difficult.

I also don't see how it would be a game breaker. My players want to use it the way it was intended: to stop or avoid combat altogether. Besides, they understand that anything the GM lets them have, can just as easily be used by the bad guys, so they already have incentive not to over-use/abuse it.

tigerguy786 wrote:What I don't understand is how/why would it hit the user?

You're spraying an aerosol into the air, if you neglected to take note of which way that air was moving, it could blow right into your own face. Or simply a fumble of the canister.

The point of keeping things FFF is absolutely not to mimic realism. Savage Worlds is NOT the game of realism, it's a game for playing John McClane, Indiana Jones or Han Solo not to reenact Band of Brothers.

Thus the rules should involve something very simple and straightforward.

That said, if you want something that incapacitates immediately:

The target hit makes a vigor roll at -2 (-4 is a bit extreme with the way the system works, but if you want it to be that nasty, you could do that) on a failure they are incapacitated for 2d6 hours or else until the spray can be flushed from their eyes, on a success they are at -2 to all actions for 2d6 minutes.

Is that a better compromise?

"Well, you do know what those who underestimate tigers always say right?"

Yuritau wrote:My problem with all the "keep it FFF" options in other threads, and what y'all have suggested here, is that they don't mirror/mimic the actual effects of pepper spray AT ALL. Pepper spray does NOT have a short and simple effect. Nor does it blind you, though it triggers a reflex to close your eyes and/or blink a lot, as your eyes are trying to clear out an irritant. It also doesn't make any sense to me to have it deal damage dice of any kind, it is used because it's debilitating (ie: makes it difficult to do anything), without doing any lasting damage. You use it to take people out of combat, completely. Sure, a person can try to power through it, but for most people, that would be very difficult.

I also don't see how it would be a game breaker. My players want to use it the way it was intended: to stop or avoid combat altogether. Besides, they understand that anything the GM lets them have, can just as easily be used by the bad guys, so they already have incentive not to over-use/abuse it.

It's still a more effective "weapon" than a gun really, especially if they want to avoid any repercussions for using firearms in a modern game. Keep in mind if the "incentive" for them not to abuse it is based off the GM using the same weapon against them, then pretty much by definition that weapon is overpowered compared to others since it needs a meta-game reason to not be "abused."

As far as the FFF responses, well, the orginal post just asked what folks thought about it, not if it mimicked the actual effects of pepper spray in the "real world." Lots of things in the game aren't mimicked exactly, because doing so doesn't necessarily make the game more fun which is the ultimate goal always. If in this case, it does for your group, then don't worry about those comments; it's just part of being a unique group.

I would say however, that "debilitation" in the system is handled by Fatigue, inflicting a penalty to any actions attempted. It's even already within the system to say that Fatigue effects can be limited. For instance, some effects can at most cause Incapacitation, but not Death. If you wanted to limit it to Exhaustion (-2), that's possible though I would tend to think that pepper spray could lead to Incapacitation (the pain being so severe as to make any action impossible until recovered from).

And that's the other nice thing about Fatigue, recovery is dependent on the cause, so all it takes is "A level of Fatigue is recovered every 10 minutes, or every minute if the target has lots of water to wash off the spray and flush their eyes."

So something like...

Pepper SprayRange: 1/2/4
Effect: Target must make a Vigor roll at -2 (-4 with a raise). On a failure, they are Shaken for 1d4 rounds before they can recover and suffer a level of Fatigue. On a result of 1 or less, they suffer two levels of Fatigue.

Fatigue from pepper spray can Incapacitate but not cause Death. Each level of Fatigue is recovered every 10 minutes, or every minute if the target has lots of water to wash off the spray and flush their eyes.

When attacking with pepper spray, a 1 on the Shooting die results in the user being affected as well (though the Wild Die can still succeed). On a critical failure, the user must roll at -4 as if hit with a raise.

Pepper SprayRange: 1/2/4Effect: Target must make a Vigor roll at -2 (-4 with a raise). On a failure, they are Shaken for 1d4 rounds before they can recover and suffer a level of Fatigue. On a result of 1 or less, they suffer two levels of Fatigue.

Fatigue from pepper spray can Incapacitate but not cause Death. Each level of Fatigue is recovered every 10 minutes, or every minute if the target has lots of water to wash off the spray and flush their eyes.

When attacking with pepper spray, a 1 on the Shooting die results in the user being affected as well (though the Wild Die can still succeed). On a critical failure, the user must roll at -4 as if hit with a raise.

I like this a lot more than some of the other ideas. Seems a lot more in line with what pepper spray is FOR.

However I wouldn't require an explicit called shot to the head, otherwise you'd be rolling against their Parry+4 (or TN 10 if they're 2" away). Besides, it's a spray, not a single bullet. So I'd probably just assume it was aimed at their face, and there'd be no modifiers (to either attack or damage) for doing so.

Yuritau wrote:It also doesn't make any sense to me to have it deal damage dice of any kind, it is used because it's debilitating (ie: makes it difficult to do anything), without doing any lasting damage. You use it to take people out of combat, completely.

That's exactly what nonlethal damage does. The advantage of handling it as nonlethal damage is that it's much easier to balance against other weapons.

Extras are incapacitated by 1 wound, Wild Cards by 4 wounds, but both are incapacitated by 3 Fatigue levels (and the Wild Card can't Soak those with bennies, either). So if you use Fatigue, you run the risk of players stabbing and shooting their way through the minions, then using pepper spray on the big boss at the end.

Yuritau wrote:It also doesn't make any sense to me to have it deal damage dice of any kind, it is used because it's debilitating (ie: makes it difficult to do anything), without doing any lasting damage. You use it to take people out of combat, completely.

That's exactly what nonlethal damage does.

Not really. He said "without any lasting damage," and nonlethal damage is exactly the same as regular damage except for the results of Incapacitation.

Using nonlethal damage for pepper spray would mean it would take days to heal naturally from wounds caused by it. That's completely different from a temporary debilitating effect.

And then there is the conundrum of 3 nonlethal wounds made with pepper spray then means a Wild Card can be killed with just a single lethal wound. If he's Shaken, that's nothing more than a success on damage because he was pepper-sprayed. It's not like the character has been beaten within an inch of his life; he's just intensely distracted.

Zadmar wrote:Extras are incapacitated by 1 wound, Wild Cards by 4 wounds, but both are incapacitated by 3 Fatigue levels (and the Wild Card can't Soak those with bennies, either).

The Fatigue versions are based off the target making a Vigor roll, so secondary attempts to avoid the Fatigue are inherent to simply using a Benny to reroll. In effect, the "Soak Roll" is already built in.

And since it is a Trait roll, there is still also an inherent difference between Extras and Wild Cards via the Wild Die. Use the Vigor roll resisted weapon against the guy with Bennies and a Wild Die or the one with no Bennies and no Wild Die. Sure they face the same results but one is much more likely to suffer them than the other.

Clint wrote:Not really. He said "without any lasting damage," and nonlethal damage is exactly the same as regular damage except for the results of Incapacitation.

Using nonlethal damage for pepper spray would mean it would take days to heal naturally from wounds caused by it. That's completely different from a temporary debilitating effect.

And then there is the conundrum of 3 nonlethal wounds made with pepper spray then means a Wild Card can be killed with just a single lethal wound. If he's Shaken, that's nothing more than a success on damage because he was pepper-sprayed. It's not like the character has been beaten within an inch of his life; he's just intensely distracted.

These are important points that I neglected to make in my first post. My setting is a modern day (mid 90's) one with no magic of any kind, so healing is not always the easiest proposition. My players have generally found it to be more time and resource efficient to engineer situations that don't result in damage, rather than try to heal up afterwards. Doesn't always work ( ), but they try.